Swallow it Down - Addison Cain Page 0,9
idiot I found wandering the road with no pack. That’s mercy. And him being chained in the engine room—or so I have been told—is karma.” Picking her teeth with her pinky nail, she cooed, “Tell me, did you sell one of these ladies to have access to steak?”
White teeth in a splendid grin, Neil gave her the dopey puppy look that always ended badly. “I think I could just love you.”
“Handsome as you are, the feeling is not mutual.”
“You’ll change your tune. After all”—southern drawl in full effect—“fate won me your time tonight. You feel like cream, and you smell like strawberries.”
“It’s the shampoo.”
Looking even more enamored than jackass John, Neil rubbed little circles on her belly. The same belly now full of his steak. “I’ll save up to see you again. Once you settle in, you’ll think better of me.”
“All just slaves to the machine, eh? Let’s fuck until the world totally dies and humans are replaced by radioactive cockroaches. That’s the same drivel John tried to feed me too.” Throwing an arm over Neil’s shoulders, Eugenia set her lips to his ear, whispering, “And guess what? He couldn’t get me to fuck him either.”
He held a bit tighter. “You’re missing the point of the game if you think what the men up here want is sex.”
A nasty scoff was offered in response.
“We’re lonely, not enough women around no matter how hard we look. If we don’t share, we can’t function as a unit. You think we don’t fall for you? That we don’t sacrifice to find baubles and buy favor?”
“You make it sound like I have the power.” And, boy, that diatribe was not going to work on her.
But the man’s unguarded glance was nothing but exposed. “You do. You even get to keep the babies we’re never allowed to hold.”
All that steak was about to come up. “Stop talking to me.”
“Fine.” But Neil’s response was resigned. Weighted down by God only knew what.
Yet that hand remained on her belly, his chest to her back.
And though that should have eaten up all her attention, in the hour that followed the men’s hard-won dinner, her scrutiny landed on another.
The intruder so close she couldn’t imagine how he had been missed.
Sitting on the floor, jean-clad legs stretched out, and the wall at his back. Not ten feet away. Boots pointed right at her. A man who looked every bit the cowboy yet utterly a pirate, lounged. So relaxed he had melted into the scenery.
Not dressed as finely as the men who’d spent their tickets for a few hours of shared female company. Lacking the tilted hat over his brow or the bit of hay that should have hung from his lips, he watched all around him in the lazy way of someone not to be trusted.
Eyes of an indecipherable color from this distance took in everything.
And everyone made way for him, unless, like Joan, they approached in reverence.
How odd it was to listen to the madame list a quantity of items required for the girls. How easily the captain nodded that he heard her and acquiesced.
He could not have shaved in a week.
Probably smelled more like a man than the perfumed collection at Table #2.
Those boots caught the sun. Polished. Worn yet cared for.
Which spoke about character and habit. Drew Eugenia to slink off the lap of the man who’d traded tickets for a cookie sheet and access to uncovered skin. Yet, it wasn’t facing off against the captain that kept her feet going; it was inspecting those boots.
Crouched down until at eye-level, tapping her finger against metal embellishments, she said, “These might just be the cleanest shoes I’ve seen in six years.”
“Your ass is in the air. Unless you’re offering to the panting crowd, you might want to tuck your tail.”
That voice. Eugenia knew that voice. “It was you who pulled me from the water.”
“That I did.”
Dragging her gaze from those boots, she ignored all the rest of him—the open shirt, the exposed chest, the dark hair shining and in need of a cut—to get directly to the point. His eyes.
Hazel. Lined. Not a day under forty.
“I want off this ship.”
The man might have set a cigarette to his lips and lit it. But there was no cigarette, and lighters were worth more than a fast fuck. “No.”
“I won’t whore for you.” Not ever.
He gave her nothing. “We’ll see.”
“Listen to me, slaver.” She crept nearer, overcoming his legs so they might negotiate eye-to-eye. Woman-to-man. “You’ll be disappointed.”
The corner of